


Tatami Night

by ActualHurry



Category: Ghost of Tsushima (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It of Sorts, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Murder but make it intimate, Time Loop, pre act 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:07:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25680310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ActualHurry/pseuds/ActualHurry
Summary: Jin and Ryuzo have as many chances as they need to get it right.(Spoilers for end of Act 2.)
Relationships: Sakai Jin/Ryuzo
Comments: 17
Kudos: 168





	Tatami Night

**Author's Note:**

> The name of this fic was either going to be "Tatami Night" or "For Every Meeting, A Parting"; I was told the former was snappy and I hate taking myself too seriously with titles - I know, I know, it doesn't seem that way. I feel OBLIGATED TO TRY to explain the name even though a lot is lost in translation but here I go. Tatami is made through folding multiple layers - so repetition - and the term jōgo ( 畳語 ) is a play on the same character found in tatami (fold), which turns into something very literal in English meant specifically in a linguistic sense, but the idea remains redundancy/repetition/etc... so, Tatami Night = a night folded over onto itself. Or: a night repeated. Or: Groundhog Night (?)... It's been a while since I've flexed my kanji brain so if anyone has corrections to give me on that, pleeeaaase feel free!
> 
> ICYMI, spoilers for the end of Act 2.

Jin sinks the blade into Ryuzo, his flesh parting like warm meat. They’re close enough that Jin can feel the heat of Ryuzo’s body spilling out; blood drips, sticky and red, splattered everywhere: the floor, Jin’s hands, Ryuzo’s face. Ryuzo’s eyes are wide and pleading, and Jin holds Ryuzo steady on the shoulder, feels the way the grip Ryuzo keeps on his wrist begins to slip away.

“Goodbye,” Jin says, “Ryuzo.”

Ryuzo tries to mouth something; his lips move, his throat works. Whatever he wants to say, Jin never hears it.

Wind gusts into the room, breaking shoji, shattering wood. Jin whirls to face the storm, and then he’s swept away.

A breeze stirs Jin’s lashes. His eyes twitch shut tighter, fingers curling into the cold press of moist dirt.

Then he remembers.

Jin surges to consciousness again on his back, damp and chill from the night. He scrambles upwards only to instantly duck his head down into the pampas grass again when his nape prickles from the weight of eyes. He’s not safe. There are Mongols here, and close. They must have rushed into Castle Shimura once that sudden storm passed.

A quick inventory reveals that Jin seems to be perfectly fine. Nowhere hurts — not even his head, despite his suspected blow to the skull; how else would he have passed out and ended up outside after? He pauses on the memory of Ryuzo’s last breath, the glaze of his eyes, and then Jin continues, letting the reality slide over him. It needed to be done. Jin moves on.

The grip of his fingers growing weaker, going, gone.

Jin turns his attention outwards, distracting himself: surely, the storm must have destroyed the entire castle. But there seems to be not a thing out of place. There are no clouds in the sky, no tempests, moonlight clean and clear on the world around him. Castle Shimura is pristine aside from the Mongols inhabiting it. Blood no longer pours from their mouths, no hint of sweetness to the air that warns of poison. Jin counts. There are the same number of Mongols now as there were before he poisoned their drink.

His throat closes with nerves. The _poison_ —

Jin looks down and finds his pouch still closed, waiting to be used. He opens it; still full. He sniffs it…still poison.

 _Now_ his head begins to hurt.

“What…?” he whispers to himself, and that’s when a Mongol archer trips over Jin on his way to the airag.

Instinct takes over before reason. The archer opens his mouth wide in a cry of alert, but before it can be heard, Jin knocks him off his feet with a sweeping hit to the back of his knees. The archer drops down far enough for Jin to slap his hand over his mouth, and then Jin is pulling him all the way into the grass, putting his full weight in the elbow over the Mongol’s throat, turning that shout into a wheezing whisper.

His tantō is clean of Ryuzo’s blood when he unsheathes it, but the blade swiftly becomes red again. The archer’s life seeps away into the dirt.

Jin looks away from the body, waits for a free moment, and then slips out of the grass and to the airag. He dumps the poison into it, then slinks back to his hiding place.

He intended on meditating to waste away the time he spends waiting for the Mongols to drink their fill — and he’s sure he’s done it already, he’s _certain_ of it. The afterimage is more like a memory than some faded daydream that his mind could produce. He’s reminisced on the past plenty, but this isn’t right.

When Jin was young, his father would have him practice the same swipe of a sword over and over again. If he got it wrong three times, then he would repeat himself three hundred times. A hair’s breadth, Jin was told, was enough to decide life or death. So he must always ensure that his sword landed precisely where he wanted it to, and not a hair to the left, and not a hair to the right.

This moment in time feels a hair wrong _somewhere_. Not quite an echo, not quite a memory. Simply an off-angled repetition.

Jin only stands when the Mongols’ bubbling coughs and wet retches have nearly come to an end. He steps past crawling forms and desperate bodies curled in on themselves. Limbs still twitch from those who have not yet died. He’s seen it all before. It’s a sight that won’t ever leave him. So why is he seeing it again?

Ascending to the main keep is precarious on his spirit. Jin opens the door, and just as he thought, knew, felt: the Khan isn’t there.

But Ryuzo isn’t either.

The one, most notable thing that is so different — Ryuzo. His presence, the lack of it, is scalding. Jin stands there, silhouetted by the moonlight, the cool of night creeping in along with him, and wonders why it feels like throwing out his grapple only to catch empty space.

“Jin.”

The sudden relief upon hearing Ryuzo’s voice dies in fire as anger rushes in to replace it. This strange lapse has changed nothing. Ryuzo is still responsible for so much pain and so many deaths. Ryuzo’s hands have bled Tsushima near-dry alongside the Khan.

Jin draws his sword as Ryuzo steps out from behind a wooden support.

Ryuzo’s blade is already gleaming in his hand, waiting. Jin blinks and sees another time — Ryuzo approaching him with open palms and a rueful tone, desperate when it hadn’t been enough to tempt Jin towards him again. Nothing could ever be enough anymore.

“Ryuzo,” Jin says, still and quiet. 

Ryuzo seems to take a moment to pause. His sword is loose in his hand, Jin notices. Not quite held ready, but held all the same. “You’re not going to ask me where the Khan went?” 

Jin doesn’t balk. “He rode north.”

Ryuzo’s eyes flash. “Where did you hear that?”

“From—” _You._ No. It doesn’t matter, Jin reminds himself. It doesn’t matter. “I’m here to end this.”

“End me,” Ryuzo corrects. “Right?”

He sounds pained somehow, like the very thought hurts to touch on. Jin holds his gaze until Ryuzo blinks and glances past him, eyes darting away like fish under uncertain waters. “The Khan would have you do the same to me,” Jin says.

“He wants your head,” Ryuzo says, careful.

Jin takes a step forward. There is no talking him down and there is no forgiveness in mind. All that is left is this: his sword and Ryuzo. That’s all it can be. That’s it.

“Jin,” Ryuzo urges. Jin almost pauses, but forces forward. Ryuzo stumbles back a step. “ _Jin_. Stop for a second.”

“Ryuzo,” snaps Jin. His blood boils. He aches. “Lift your sword.”

“Jin, there’s something—”

“ _Face me!_ ” Jin shouts.

The words are apparently loud enough to demand obedience. Ryuzo’s lips part and then close, his eyes dark with solemn understanding. He takes his stance; his feet are sure, but Jin can read the line of his shoulders as well as any writing.

“You won’t give me the opportunity to surrender?” Ryuzo asks, quiet.

Jin sinks into his own posture. “You won’t take it.”

Ryuzo’s mouth twitches into a bittersweet smile.

Jin knows this fight well. Even if it never really happened, he would still always remember the way Ryuzo’s eyes blazed with survival, the flash of his teeth gritting together, the dry rasp of his breathing as things carried on and on. Jin doesn’t intend to savor the fight, he wants the opposite, but he can’t run his blade through Ryuzo’s heart in an instant. Ryuzo makes him work for his justice.

The trouble has never been that Ryuzo isn’t good. It has always been that Jin is _better_.

Blade meets blade, sword on sword, no breaks but for stolen breaths between strikes. They swap hits; Jin is always ahead, gasping through the pain and steeling himself for the next blow. Ryuzo pants for breath, sweat causing his hair to stick to his brow, as he resists Jin’s force. Jin is close enough to see a broken seam on Ryuzo’s skin under the fluttering cloth of a sleeve, the way blood stains the edges of the cloth like dye.

“You’re really trying to kill me,” Ryuzo rasps. An unspoken word hangs onto the end of the sentence, but Ryuzo seems to bite it off too quickly to speak it.

Jin shoves him, sending Ryuzo back two steps while he regains his own distance with a quick dart away. Jin’s jaw hurts from staying clenched, blood in his mouth from a bitten tongue. The mask hides the twist of his lips, but it can’t hide the glint of his eyes.

“The things you’ve done,” Jin says, fractured. He shakes it off, then drives forward again in another flurry of strikes.

It ends the same; a well-aimed slash, a wet cry from Ryuzo as he drops to his knees. Jin can’t look at him, but he’s quick to flick the blood from his blade, to tuck it away again to free his hands. Ryuzo is crawling closer. It’s a nightmare repeated. Righteous fury erases none of the shame and horror, none of the desperate sorrow, none of the regret; it can only accompany, strengthen, and dizzy him.

Jin sinks to a crouch and rests his hand on Ryuzo. They stare at each other, just like the last time.

“Please…” Ryuzo’s plea is muddy with death in his throat.

Jin can’t take this again. Ryuzo grabs his arm to hold onto him, but Jin puts his hand on his cheek. He smears the blood on Ryuzo’s face. There’s tears Jin never noticed trailing down from his eyes, the tear tracks pinkened with blood. Jin’s thumb presses hard against his cheek, his grip nearly stuttering down to Ryuzo’s jaw. He wants to shake him. He wants to demand another try. There’s a rushing sound in his ears: his pulse, loud, growing louder.

Betrayal is written across Ryuzo’s brow, loss across his wound-wet lips.

“Goodbye, Ryuzo,” Jin murmurs.

He thrusts the tantō into Ryuzo’s chest.

The rushing sound bursts inward.

It’s not his pulse —

It’s the storm.

Again, Jin poisons the airag.

Again, Jin climbs the steps.

Again, Jin finds Ryuzo.

Jin doesn’t let him get a word in before he leaps, sword extended; Ryuzo makes a wretched noise as the blade pierces home in his stomach.

Ryuzo coughs blood. Without meeting his glassy gaze, Jin drags the sword up, and the storm rages.

Jin flings the doors open. He makes it one step into the room before there’s the overfamiliar sensation of a sword hilt slamming into the back of his head. Flat on the floor, Jin clings enough to consciousness to gasp, his ears ringing.

“When did you get so impatient?” Ryuzo demands from above him. The surroundings swirl in Jin’s vision as he pushes himself up onto his elbows. “Let me _speak_.”

Jin raises his arm to protect against a blow he’s sure will come, but it never does. Ryuzo only scoffs. There’s the sound of rustling around, the feeling of someone taking something from him — his sword, Jin realizes. Ryuzo’s taken his sword.

“Three times,” Ryuzo mutters.

Slowly, Jin raises his scattered head, eyes blurry until he blinks them. Ryuzo is kneeling in front of him, paused, Jin’s katana held on his lap.

“I’m,” Jin says, and then he wrenches himself away to throw up.

Ryuzo’s wrinkling his nose when he recovers enough to look back at him again. “Poison?” he asks, forcing lightness in his voice.

“Concussion,” Jin answers dryly. “And whatever else is going on.”

“Right, that,” says Ryuzo, then after what appears to be a moment of hesitation, he sets Jin’s sword beside himself. “Tired of killing me yet?”

Jin gives the question the wide berth it deserves, and instead says, “What’s happening?”

Ryuzo frowns. “I thought you’d know.”

Jin remains silent. This curse, whatever it might be, is causing them to relive these moments, again and again. Nothing is changing. Jin has to come here, has to kill Ryuzo, has to finish his duty. Ryuzo is his mistake; he trusted him and he must be the one to kill him for all that he’s done. The people who’ve died because of his decisions, countless. Taka. Jin can’t forget any of them.

But his punishment isn’t sticking.

When Jin raises his eyes to him, Ryuzo’s lips are curved into a grimace, his brows furrowed tightly.

“…What happens after?” Ryuzo says quietly.

“After?”

“After you kill me.”

Jin looks at the keep around them, the drumbeat in his head only worsening. “A storm.”

“And then?”

“And then I wake up. Outside.”

Ryuzo shakes his head. “I blink and I’m back here again.” He matches Jin’s stare, though his eyes are half-lidded with appraisal. “Do you know what it’s like to feel yourself die?”

Sand slipping underfoot. Fear, choking and noxious. Heart like a hare’s. Blood smudging his eyes, sweat stinging his wounds. Arrows buried in his back. The final kickstart twitch of muscles begging for life.

“Yes,” Jin says.

Ryuzo pauses for only a second, and then he says, “Then stop killing me.”

Both of them stay kneeling in front of the other. Jin’s jaw is set, his mind is still; he doesn’t expect Ryuzo to grab his wrists, and nearly jerks backwards out of surprise.

“Think about it, Jin,” Ryuzo whispers, gripping tighter. “Maybe…maybe this is a chance to fix things.”

Voice taut, trying to quell the nausea, Jin says, “Some things are meant to stay broken.”

He does free himself then, drawing his tantō with expert, intimate speed. Before he can so much as challenge Ryuzo, Ryuzo has his fingers curled around Jin’s, keeping the tantō distanced.

“Where’s the storm, Jin?” Ryuzo says, quick like raindrops sprinkling down, turning dirt to mud.

Jin grinds his teeth together until his head pangs so thickly that the pain nearly drags him down.

“Where’s the storm?” Ryuzo repeats, sounding like desperation, but Jin lunges for his katana.

Ryuzo loses, again. Jin’s eyes blur as the wood moans against the wind, and he sinks to his knees with a gasp for breath.

There’s a few times after that where there’s no speaking. Jin storms the keep, they fight, Ryuzo falls. At some point, Jin realizes that Ryuzo’s learned him just as well. Once, Ryuzo’s sword tip pierces the thin armor of the Ghost, right over his chest, and Jin nearly stops altogether. Reflex keeps him moving, keeps him light on his toes, has him darting back.

It leaves a small cut, only through the armor. Jin himself remains untouched.

Ryuzo smiles at him so bitterly that Jin’s not sure it’s even a smile. “How many tries?” Ryuzo says, each word laced with airy, helpless laughter. “How many lifetimes did it take?”

Jin’s tired, so tired.

“That would have been a deathblow on anyone else,” Ryuzo says wonderingly. “But it had to be you.”

It ends with Ryuzo gripping the tantō with him. Pulling it in. Keeping the blade deep.

Jin stares at the blood on Ryuzo’s lips until the gale whips them apart.

“You can’t kill me,” Jin says.

Ryuzo doesn’t even have his katana with him this time. He’s sitting there, waiting, the most patient and resigned Jin has ever seen him. “You’re the best swordsman in Tsushima,” Ryuzo tells him plainly. “You expect too much from me. As usual.”

“No,” Jin says, stepping forward. “You can’t kill me.”

Ryuzo holds his gaze until Jin takes another step. Then he breaks it, looking away. “Not for lack of trying.”

Ryuzo isn’t looking, so Jin anticipates the surprise when he throws his katana on the floor in front of him. Jin lowers himself to crouch, then into a kneel altogether, his sheathed weapon waiting between them. Then he bows his head.

“I have given you every honorable death I could,” Jin says in a rush. “Please.”

His eyes are on the floor. He doesn’t see what Ryuzo does, but he feels the air shift as Ryuzo moves, hears the intake of breath before he speaks. “Jin—”

“Please.”

Ryuzo is motionless. Jin does not break his posture. Eventually, from the edge of his vision, he sees Ryuzo’s fingertips brush over the tantō’s sheath. Just as quickly, they’re gone again, his hand withdrawn. “No,” Ryuzo says.

Jin feels his shoulders begin to shake. “I don’t know what else to do.”

Now, Ryuzo is still for even longer. They both remain as stones to one another, and then Jin feels a touch light upon his shoulder and squeeze, once Jin makes it clear that he’s not budging either way.

“If I ever kill you,” Ryuzo tells him, “I want to have earned it.”

“I don’t want this anymore!” Jin shouts. He snaps out a hand to grip Ryuzo’s arm like a dying man. “The _storm!_ Every time! I have killed _hundreds_ now! I have killed _you!_ How many times?” Drowning, Jin clutches at him and finally, he lifts his head. “How many times, Ryuzo?”

Ryuzo’s looking at him with wide eyes. He barely manages to adjust his expression, but not soon enough.

“It might break this cycle,” Jin pushes, taking slower lungfuls of air. “Maybe it needs to happen.”

Ryuzo shakes off Jin’s hold, then gives him his katana back. Jin watches him like he’s anchored to Ryuzo’s very form, watches as he stands and walks over to where he’s left his own sword.

“Take up your weapon,” Ryuzo says with his back facing Jin.

Jin holds the sheath so tightly that his knuckles bleed white. Slowly, he pushes himself off the floor. He rubs the back of his hand across his face, then exhales. He draws his blade. They face each other.

Jin takes Ryuzo’s breath, and the storm takes his.

“I’m glad it’s you,” Ryuzo says a few tries later.

They’ve dug up the only remaining sake in the entirety of Castle Shimura, and Jin is as warm and as light as he could feel under the circumstances. They’re sitting side by side, but not touching. The gourd between them is long empty. Jin’s mask rests next to his knee.

Jin snorts. “You’re glad I’m killing you?”

“I don’t want to die, Jin,” explains Ryuzo, like it’s ridiculous for Jin to think otherwise. “But I’d rather it be you, if anyone. Not your uncle.”

Jin falls quiet, imagining what would happen if Ryuzo did surrender. What Lord Shimura might do. How things might follow. The Ghost would be imprisoned. If he claimed Ryuzo as his spy, Ryuzo would be taken along with him. They would rot together, but it would not be lonely.

Taka’s death is raw and distant all at once. The Mongols feel an ocean away. Nothing feels real anymore except for the rush of life in his veins every time Ryuzo’s blade clashes on his own.

Jin stares down at his hands. “You said you lost everything.”

“I did.”

“Your men.”

“You killed them.”

Jin nods, slow. “You should have trained them better.” 

“They haven’t always been mine.” Ryuzo’s laugh is a hoarse cough, uncertain whether to be amused or insulted. “You know, I never anticipated we’d go against samurai one day.” A little of both, it seems, from the dry tone.

“You should have thought of that before taking a bounty on one.”

Jin feels Ryuzo’s eyes on him, and by the time he glances up, Ryuzo’s gaze is roaming across his form, from the mask on the floor to the band around Jin’s head.

“Is that what you are?” Ryuzo asks, leaning over.

“Not since…” Jin starts, but he doesn’t know where the line was drawn, and he quiets. He shakes his head rapidly, trying to clear the lull of sake from his thoughts. “I wish this was over.”

Ryuzo stays silent beside him for a long moment, and then he suggests, “Watch the sunrise with me.”

They don’t have time. Shimura’s forces arrive much too soon.

Jin runs Ryuzo through before his uncle gets the chance.

There’s one attempt where Jin wastes no time and simply sneaks into the keep to find Ryuzo before bothering to poison the airag. It doesn’t make a difference anyway if he’s just going to have to do it all again. Ryuzo raises his eyebrows at Jin’s early arrival.

“This is new,” Ryuzo says.

Jin doesn’t miss the idly needling way he says it, but he’s long past giving his guilt any pause. “I’m just trying something.”

“And what’s that?”

“Nothing,” says Jin, and sits.

Ryuzo stands there for a moment before joining him. “You saw the look in your uncle’s eyes,” Ryuzo says. “You know what he’ll do to me when he gets here. Every time. What he’d do to you, if he got the chance.”

“Ryuzo,” Jin sighs. “I’m—” _tired of spilling your blood, tired of feeling your life bleed out, tired of doing this without end._ Jin sighs a second time. “If you surrendered…”

Now, Ryuzo doesn’t say anything at all. He’d refused so firmly before, but this time as Jin trails off, Ryuzo says nothing. Jin watches him, Ryuzo’s head downturned, his eyes low, his lips pressed together tightly. In his lap, his hands fist. The flyaway strands of his hair fall and curl around his face like thin rivers spilling from a lake.

“Do you want to stand beside your uncle so badly?” Ryuzo asks, evenly, almost soft.

Jin’s throat works and he sets his attention on the wall behind Ryuzo, looking past him altogether. “He…has said, we would be father and son.” He remembers the impact of that slap; his cheek stings all over again. “After what I’ve done here…”

“Sakai Jin can be Lord Shimura’s son. The Ghost can’t.”

Jin finds Ryuzo’s gaze flitting across his face, the mask. Slowly, Jin reaches up to unhook the piece from either ear, looking down at the visage of the Ghost held lightly in his palm. “But the Ghost can end this fight.” 

“Is that what you want?”

No hesitation: “Yes.” 

Ryuzo’s expression turns into something complicated. “Damn it, Jin.” Ryuzo leans back slightly, chest expanding with a slow breath. “What if — what if you didn’t have to end the war?”

There is no word for the emotion that flickers to life in Jin’s hollow chest, in the cage of his ribs. He has not a single response for Ryuzo’s question that isn’t _I’m the only one who can._ He hasn’t quite voiced something so certain, something that his uncle would shake his head at, something even his allies would give quiet in return. He’s said similar things, but never said _Me, alone_. 

But the samurai are dead. The shogun’s men will share the same fate. And Jin wouldn’t dare ask anyone else to become the Ghost. 

“We could disappear,” Ryuzo goes on. Jin glances up at him, speechless. “You’ve killed enough that Lord Shimura’s forces shouldn’t have any trouble breaking through the lines. They’ll come in, take Castle Shimura, and chase him north. And we can go.”

Jin’s finally shaken from his thoughts by Ryuzo’s plan, so tangible that Jin realizes he really thinks it’s possible. Jin laughs, raw. “At what cost, Ryuzo? You know what happened on the bridge—”

“The Khan knows us—”

“And he’ll stop at nothing.”

“But you can.”

“ _You killed Taka_.” Jin breaks, rage rattling him but making his voice strong. “Your idea to speak to me _killed_ Yuna’s brother. You made it so that I couldn’t protect him. This idea is no better. People will die.”

Ryuzo gestures outside hopelessly. “People have already died, Jin! You think I don’t feel guilt? You think I don’t wish things could have been different?”

Jin couldn’t tear his gaze off of Ryuzo if he tried, pieces of his heart cracking off like broken pottery. “They could have been,” Jin breathes. “Things could have been different. I asked for your help.” 

“My men were starving.”

“ _Were_ ,” says Jin, quiet. Piqued hurt flames up on Ryuzo’s face, but Jin only slides his mask back on and gets to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Ryuzo demands as Jin begins to walk away.

“I might as well see how far north I can chase the Khan before we start over again.”

Jin rests his hand on his sheath and steps out the door. There’s still Mongols milling about, the poison still untouched, hanging on his waist.

He barely makes it into Kamiagata before he hears the telltale blare of Mongol horns behind him, the distant sounds of swords ringing out with echoing shouts and cries from behind the castle walls. Jin can see the storm coming before it reaches him, clouds of gray and black that swallow the world whole. He has just enough time to wonder if it was his uncle that got to Ryuzo first.

Jin thinks.

He hides from Ryuzo, scaling Castle Shimura on the outside and taking refuge on the slanted rooftops to avoid any coming eyes. He will wait out the night up here, alone, watching the moon slowly cross the sky. Just as well, eventually Lord Shimura and all his men will burst into the courtyard and find all the dead Mongols. And just as well, there will come the sounds of skirmishing, silence, and the storm. 

He decides a few things in these quiet hours spent in repetition. Conclusions find him. 

Ryuzo won’t surrender for fear of death — yet he’s died at Jin’s hand so many times that the moments blur together in red and shadow, the heat of life snuffed out and the faraway gaze of a fading spirit. And every one of these times, the world has told them in no uncertain terms, _try again._ They’ve been a hair off for the past dozen nights. Jin can’t take a hundred more. There’s still a fight to be won. The Khan still walks Tsushima. People still live in fear. All of this will continue, over and over, again and again, until the cycle is broken.

If Ryuzo dies, the storm comes. They can’t fight. Jin needs him alive. Part of him soars at knowing this; part of him aches, the same vibrant pain that came with watching Taka’s final dark moments. Jin cannot be ruled by emotion, but the emotion is there whether he likes it or not, no matter how much he swallows it down and chokes on it.

Below, the chaos of fighting rises to his ears.

“Ryuzo,” Jin sighs. He settles back against the rooftop, watching as the stars slowly become blotted out by the growing clouds. “I’m sorry.” 

Jin doesn’t find Ryuzo in the main keep. He searches high and low, but Ryuzo has chosen to run, it seems, and Jin wonders if he expected that he would be left to a violent end at Lord Shimura’s blade for a third time. He expands his search outward. The courtyard is overflowing with the poisoned dead, but this far along, Jin hardly takes note of them. He’s killed these same men night after night. He counts the horses, the number engraved in his mind like every other detail of this moment, pressed into remembrance from recurrence alone.

There’s a horse missing. Jin finds tracks of hooves that start at trot-width apart and quickly spread to a gallop. He mounts another of the horses and gives chase.

Ryuzo has never run before; for whatever reason, he’s stayed in his place, determined to remain rooted to the spot. Jin has always seen him look so certain, so stubbornly sure of Jin’s arrival every moment. They must have both come to the same conclusions in their time apart: Ryuzo’s death brings a storm, so he must not die.

With a sinking feeling, Jin realizes too late: It isn’t that Ryuzo is fleeing. He’s surviving.

The castle walls rush past and bring the gate into view, already open, just wide enough for a single horse and rider to pass through; judging by the deep punch of hooves that Ryuzo’s horse has made in the soft mud, he rode hard to try and get his headstart. He knew that Jin would come for him. 

Jin’s horse huffs, shaking its head and slowing as they reach the gate, and Jin adjusts his weight to settle into the saddle more like the Mongol riders he’s faced, trying to coax the horse faster once more. He can’t waste any time. He knows down to the moment that Lord Shimura’s forces will break through into the courtyard. His uncle won’t find Jin, his uncle won’t find Ryuzo. They won’t be allowed to simply turn themselves in then. They will be hunted.

Jin hears Ryuzo’s voice in his head: _And we can go_. He steels himself and pushes his horse onward. 

The night cloaks the world in grays and blues, Jin’s breaths just shy of visible in the air. They fly between watchtowers, down the thin blanket of snow that stretches over hills and grassland. It won’t be until a little later in the month that the snow falls more thickly, covering the ground until the only visible brown is the pampas grass that forces its way through the cold chill. For now, it’s only scattered patches of white that glow in the moonlight, all the shadows on the land deepened by the dark.

The tracks lead further north, where the river runs with the most force. Kin Falls is up ahead, and Jin follows the tracks until he reaches the edge of the cliff. Below, the waterfall pours down into a deep pool, the water nearly black, illuminated only by the glitter of the moon and stars. Through the haze of mist rising from below, Jin spots a flash of movement, a ways away — a familiar lone rider on a Mongol horse, trotting carefully beside the river’s bank.

“Ryuzo!” Jin shouts. His words are swallowed by the roar of the waterfall, and even to his own ears his call sounds weak by comparison. Again: “ _Ryuzo!_ ”

There is no way for him to be heard, but Ryuzo looks back anyway. The moment stays suspended, their eyes locked over a distance. Ryuzo slows his horse. 

And then he whirls around again and takes off.

Jin swears, yanking his own mount’s reins to run sidelong the cliffs, skirting the drop to reach the hilly slope nearby. He rises in his saddle, letting his horse run, and _run_ he does, pounding hoofbeats sending Jin’s own pulse shaking with every impact. They hurtle down the distance, catching up fast.

Ryuzo glances back again. Jin’s close enough now to see his eyes widen. They’re so close. So close. If Ryuzo sets his horse running any faster, they’ll have to tear through the whole countryside. 

Jin has only one chance. 

“Ryuzo!” Jin yells, and then, in one frustrated, last-ditch effort, he lights and throws firecrackers as far as he can.

His horse’s gait is smooth, smooth enough that he manages to aim the throw well; the firecrackers land just beside Ryuzo, right as he’s lifting the reins to direct his mount away. A flicker of satisfaction rolls through Jin as he balances in his saddle once more, the sudden _snapsnappop_ of the firecrackers echoing through the night. Ryuzo’s horse startles instantly; they’re far enough from the waterfall that it’s the loudest sound around them, sharp cracks of noise in the night.

Just as Jin is about to reach them, the firecrackers rattle off one last time, and Ryuzo’s horse rears back, enough that her hoof catches the edge of the riverbank, losing balance —

Everything slows, as if Jin is about to let an arrow fly, as if the arrow is going to take his heart right along with it.

There’s a heavy splash as Ryuzo and his horse fall down into the river, and Jin throws himself off of his horse and down into the water alongside them, the rush of cold water shriveling all the breath in his lungs. Swept down by the current, Jin breaks the surface to gasp, just in time to see Ryuzo’s head pop out from beneath the water.

Without another thought, Jin surrenders himself to the river’s pull and he lunges, snatching Ryuzo’s wrist. Jin’s granted one last, desperate gift of strength, and he snags at a rocky outcrop in the bank, fingertips nearly stripped raw from the friction, until he takes hold of the outcrop completely. Jin cries out at the pain, hanging on with Ryuzo nearly dragging him back into the current. A glance down the river shows Ryuzo’s horse being swept away, dipping below the water, bobbing above again. 

He has just enough time to think, _no_ , when he feels Ryuzo’s weight disappear and lift upwards, outwards, but then there’s a hand in his view.

“Come on,” Ryuzo urges, and Jin surges up to grab his hand without a doubt in his mind.

Ryuzo pulls him ashore alongside him, and they both tumble to the dirt, gasping. Jin rests on his hands and knees, trying to will away the raw feeling of his heartbeat in the pads of his fingers. He can hear Ryuzo beside him, recovering, and he turns his head to see him flat on his back, chest rising and falling fast.

“Your horse,” Jin breathes, panting. “She had never seen battle.” 

“Shut up,” Ryuzo tells him, his eyes shut. “The Khan said she was his favorite.”

“Second favorite,” Jin manages. “The favorite has been long dead.” 

“Why?”

“She…” Jin blinks, slowly lifting his head, sitting back on his heels. “You’re asking after his mare?” 

“No,” Ryuzo coughs, almost laughing. He opens his eyes and looks back at Jin. Jin sees only honest agitation and bewilderment in his face. “You know what would have happened if you’d just let me die then. Why bother saving me?” 

“Because I’ve killed you enough times to know that I don’t want to see you die.” Ryuzo is still watching him, disbelief in his frown. Jin smiles slightly, glancing down. “And,” Jin adds, “if you are going to die, I’d rather it be by my hand.” 

Ryuzo doesn’t say anything at that. Jin’s beginning to shiver, soaked-through and dripping, and from the deep blue of Ryuzo’s lips, he’s no better off. Carefully, Jin gets to his feet, then extends his hand to Ryuzo. “There’s a house nearby,” Jin offers. “I saw it from the cliffs. It looks abandoned.”

It doesn’t seem as if Ryuzo will take his hand, but the fire seems to seal the deal, and he lets Jin help him up. Jin enters the empty home first, sword drawn, and with no one nearby and only broken, empty things inside ever hinting at an inhabitant, they settle in at the irori. They strip away too-wet clothes, the night air quickly warming from the growing heat of the hearth. Their hakama, not yet dry, stick to them both like a second skin. Jin takes off the Ghost mask and leaves it with his katana.

“Where do we go from here?” Ryuzo asks. His dark eyes shine with firelight. Jin can only look for a moment before his heart gets the better of him. 

“I want you to consider surrendering again,” Jin says softly. He keeps his gaze on the fire. “You wouldn’t be surrendering alone.” 

Jin feels more than sees Ryuzo stiffen up. “You?” Ryuzo asks after an incredulous silence.

“You’re right.” Jin shakes his head. “The Ghost can’t be the jitō’s son.” 

Ryuzo shifts closer, enough that it forces Jin to look his way. Their eyes meet, and Jin realizes at some point, they’ve gotten close enough to each other that their knees nearly touch.

“What if I don’t want you surrendering for me?” Ryuzo says to him, his voice a whisper under the hiss of the fire.

“It’s not just for you.” 

“But it is, a little. For me.” 

Jin’s jaw works. “Ryuzo—”

“I can stand alone and face what I’ve done, Jin. You’ve had no problem listing it all out for me before.” Ryuzo’s voice rises in volume, agitation ringing throughout. Jin remains unflinching. “And now you’re telling me to give myself up with you. And for what? Do you feel that much like you’ve failed me? Or are you tired of thinking about how you’ve _wronged_ me?”

Jin closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. His skin prickles hot, a restless impulse coursing through him, as warm as the river was cold. 

Ryuzo does not stop. “You’re tired of killing me, and maybe I’m tired of you looking at me like I’m someone _pitiable_ —”

“No, that’s never been—”

“It’s _always_ been how it is between us, and nothing can stop that—”

Jin kisses him.

Ryuzo’s breath shudders inward against Jin’s mouth, and Jin chases it, already half-turned into Ryuzo’s lap, now climbing onto him altogether. This first kiss is smashed together, aimless and messy, a teeth-press as much as a joining of lips. Ryuzo’s lips are still cold, still damp, and Jin overtakes the chill with a warm slide of his tongue, hooking his arm around the back of Ryuzo’s neck to deny himself nothing. 

Ryuzo catches himself before Jin can push him backwards, his second hand gripping Jin’s hip like a lifeline, thumb digging into the soft space at Jin’s waist. Jin pants between the first kiss and the next, this one left at the corner of Ryuzo’s mouth, a silent question waiting to be answered.

And for a time, no answer comes. Jin has taken all the wild hunger of the storm and brought it to this moment, and it can never be undone.

“Don’t do this to me,” Ryuzo breathes. His grip tightens. “Is this bribery?” 

Jin can barely fill his lungs. “I promise,” he says, “I promise. It isn’t.” 

But, Jin thinks as Ryuzo kisses him harder, as Ryuzo pulls him down to the space next to the irori, if it convinces Ryuzo, then Jin won’t complain. It feels double-edged somehow, selfish and selfless all at once, but Jin isn’t taking it back and Ryuzo isn’t stopping him. Jin drags a bite down Ryuzo’s neck and feels his throat jump beneath his teeth. Ryuzo palms him in his hakama, starts undoing that and his fundoshi until Jin is bare enough for him to grab, and his hand is dry and cold and Jin jerks backwards so hard that Ryuzo cracks a laugh.

It’s such a nice sound that the offense melts away just as quickly as it came on. Jin takes Ryuzo’s wrist and pins his hand down near the warmth of the hearth, taking a moment to catch his breath.

“This isn’t bribery,” he repeats, peering down at Ryuzo.

Ryuzo looks up at him, mussed and red-lipped and half-smiling like it’s a little funny. “Alright,” he murmurs, and leads Jin into another kiss, this one wetter and slower, like stoking the flames, or nocking an arrow and pulling the string back and back and back. Jin’s spine arches like a bow and Ryuzo whispers his name between their lips, reaches down with his warmed hand after licking it to stroke Jin steadily. 

Jin is broken with it, all his yearning coming out in harsh cuts of breath, all his desperate pleading wordless in the wake of the pleasure spilling into Ryuzo’s loose fist. Ryuzo hushes him, kisses him to moor him again, and then Jin is pushing Ryuzo’s clothes away and sinking down his body.

“What are you—” Ryuzo’s question stops with a choked noise when Jin’s lips part around his cock. 

Jin presses the flat of his tongue all along the underside of his length, licks down and up again, wetting him, swallowing the salt-musk taste. “Let me,” Jin whispers, and Ryuzo’s only reply is to grip Jin by the hair and obey as Jin does what he likes to him, as Jin wrings Ryuzo’s shattered sounds out of him with his lips, his tongue, his hand.

It can’t last, but Jin wants to drag it out. He dares to hope he can another time, but right now, this is what they’re allowed, something quick and dirty and fraught in an old, airy house. Ryuzo pulses in his mouth and Jin swallows him down, rising afterwards with a caught breath.

Ryuzo looks half-cornered and half-boneless with Jin settled between his legs like this, and Jin rests his fingertips, still scuffed-sensitive, on Ryuzo’s thigh very gently, like a bird lighting upon a thin branch.

“Ryuzo,” Jin says, voice sticky with what they’ve done. He swallows, tight. “Trust me. Please.” 

Now, Ryuzo’s laugh is not so spur of the moment. It’s a little bitter, soft on the exhale. “You ask me to trust you.”

“It’s better than you asking me.” 

Ryuzo scoffs and laughs again, ending with a sigh that sounds so tired that all Jin can think is _I understand_. 

Jin adds, unbothered, “And if it fails, you can die, and we can try again.”

Ryuzo snaps a look at him and shakes his head, pushing Jin back so he can sit upright and fix his clothes. Now that they’re not leeching off of each other’s bodies, it’s cold again, the only heat available from the fire. “That’s not funny,” Ryuzo says, gruff.

“It’s not,” Jin agrees. “I want you next to me throughout this. But I want this to end. I want the Khan dead, and I want to be the one to kill him.” 

Ryuzo levels his gaze at him. “And after that?”

“After that…we’ll see.” 

They both bask in the hearth for a moment, neither daring to break this tenuous truce. Ryuzo finds a scrap of leftover cloth from whoever left this home behind to clean his hand with, tossing it over to Jin afterwards. 

“So we surrender together,” Ryuzo says suddenly. “Your uncle throws us in some holding for the shogun. How will you kill the Khan?” 

“I’ll find a way.” Of that, there is no doubt.

Ryuzo puffs out an expletive. “You…” He stops himself, but Jin sees the moment his mind is made up. “Fine. _Fine_ , Jin.” Despite everything, something blossoms in Jin like the first rays of the morning sun, bright and real. “Damn you. It _was_ a bribe,” Ryuzo continues, aghast.

“It wasn’t!” Jin argues, kicking him in the ankle, not nearly hard enough to bruise.

They ready themselves later, after hands find other secret places and mouths draw out other soft noises, indulgent in the safest way they can be, but the sound of patrols grow closer and closer as the night goes on. They dress swiftly once their clothes are dry enough, but Ryuzo stops Jin from leaving the house by catching his hand.

“If we’re doing this,” Ryuzo murmurs to him, intense in the shadow of the shoji door. “…We should have a fresh start.”

Jin follows Ryuzo’s gaze down to his tantō, and he can’t quite hide the uncertainty in his own words as he says, low, “Are you sure?” 

“Be gentle with me,” Ryuzo tells him with a shaky little grin, and Jin pulls the mask away to kiss him as he draws the blade.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a thousand more words about Mongolian horse riding but alas. I remembered Sekiro fondly with the whole firecracker thing, but also a big sorry to Ryuzo's horse. She was a necessary sacrifice in the name of smut.
> 
> Also this is unbeta'd, so if you can forgive any grammar errors, typos, spelling issues, overlooking of little details...I would be much obliged. :)
> 
> Thank you for reading! <3


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